Will the NYC Department of Education remove the name of W.E.B. DuBois from a Crown Heights high school?

According to a DOE release on plans to merge Aspirations Diploma Plus High School and W.E.B. DuBois High School, “the NYCDOE anticipates that the consolidated Aspirations will pursue a name change in order to incorporate the W.E.B. Du Bois name into the name of the newly consolidated school.” However, Kings County Politics’ Kelly Mena points out, “this minor reprieve could still erase DuBois from the title as school naming and re-naming is subject to Chancellor’s Regulation A-860.”

Back in January, the city had looked to shutter the high school citing low enrollment, much to the ire of neighborhood families. Last month, the DOE put forth a controversial consolidation plan that would remove the name of the historical African-American figure and education advocate.

Go to Kings County Politics for more on why the school “has been critical in the predominantly Black community of Crown Heights” and details on the final vote in April.

While thousands of Puerto Ricans returned to the island after taking refuge in the U.S. following hurricanes Irma and María, new data shows that more are leaving, continuing a longtime depopulation trend, El Nuevo Día reports. Between April and July, 6,910 more people left than came in through the island’s three main airports. The first trimester of 2018, by contrast, offered a net entry of 83,317 people, or 40 percent of the 211,695 who left during the previous hurricane season. According to census estimates, 431,942 people have left Puerto Rico since 2010, and by 2050 the island’s population (at 3.7 million in 2017) could barely top 2 million.
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Members of the Jamaican diaspora are meeting today, Nov. 17 and Nov. 18 at the Morrow Center in Morrow, Georgia for the Jamaica USA Diaspora Summit, reports Caribbean Today. Dr. Rupert Francis, Wayne Golding and Akelia Maitland are hosting the summit. “Often times our focus is on what is happening in our homeland of Jamaica while it remains clear that as Jamaican diasporans we are not organized enough where we live to exercise any significant power of influence over our future here,” organizers said. Link to original story →

"Undocumented black migrants are building an informal network to help each other navigate their uncertain immigration status in the U.S.," reports Law at the Margins in a story that's part of a series called "We the Immigrants" produced by its Community Based News Room. “We are so few that we haven’t built the mass movements that nonblack immigrants have,” says Nekessa Opoti, a Kenyan immigrant who works with UndocuBlack, an organization assisting undocumented black people in the U.S. “Systems don’t work for us, so we rely on each other.” Link to original story →

Marking its 20th anniversary, Colorlines is honoring 20 "transformative leaders who – in the spirit of our mission – use a narrative shift strategy to reimagine what it means to advance racial justice in areas as varied as environmental justice, gender rights, labor, education and religion." Individuals from investigative reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones to environmental activist Elizabeth Yeampierre to labor organizer Saru Jayaraman to poet-rapper Mona Haydar are profiled by Ayana Byrd, with illustrations by Sinomonde Ngwane. The honorees, writes Kenrya Rankin, "remind us that no matter how dark the tunnel gets, we can always create our own light." Link to original story →